The Top 25 Disrupters Of 2016

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As CEO of Docker, the top startup building a business around Linux containers, Ben Golub is at the forefront of a technology whose rapid ascendance, it’s safe to say, caught the enterprise technology industry by surprise. Containers started out as a popular tool for developers and startups, but are now making real strides into the enterprise. And Golub, who joined Docker as CEO in 2013, has been instrumental in making this happen. Under his watch, Docker has focused on improving security, orchestration and networking for containers in enterprise environments. The approach is starting to pay dividends. Google, Red Hat, Spotify and other big name companies are now supporting Docker containers. In a recent interview, Golub said between 40 percent and 70 percent of all enterprises are now using Docker, to some degree, in their production environments. Docker under Golub is pursuing a path that will keep channel partners front and center in the coming container revolution. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, IBM, and a host of regional system integrators are already partners, and Golub says he intends to cast an even wider net for partners.

"We are very much a channel organization," Golub told CRN. "Beyond the potential for building, integrating, and reselling Docker, [containers] tend to enable great opportunities around change management, infrastructure management, and hybrid cloud." Golub thinks that within five years, the vast majority of all apps will be built and deployed using Docker containers, as opposed to the current virtual machine-based approach. If that happens, Docker could unseat VMware server virtualization as the dominant technology in the data center.